Sunday, December 30, 2012

While sifting through records on a snowy afternoon I found this paper trail for a 1972 Rolls-Royce.

It begins with the order for the car, which was initiated by Rolls-Royce of America. They ordered this two-tone green long wheelbase sedan "for stock," meaning there was no customer for it when the order was placed.

As was the case with most "for stock: cars, no options were specified. Rolls-Royce was unique at that time in that they sold their cars fully equipped, at one price. They did not have a base model car and pile on options like Cadillac or Lincoln. When a customer ordered a Rolls-Royce (as opposed to buying from stock) he might request things like cocktail glasses and decanters built into a door panel, or custom coloring to match a favorite piece of clothing. Other than that, they were built the way Rolls-Royce designed them, which still varied quite a bit from car to car as the manufacturer substituted wood veneers, headliners, switches, etc. There was no such thing as a "production line Rolls." Every motorcar was unique, even if nothing special was specified on the order.

I've looked at cars that went down the production line right after each other and seen subtle differences in what should be two identical cars. One will have a vinyl headliner, while another car has wool - little changes like that set the cars apart from each other. These long wheelbase cars were "more full" of little differences and eccentricities than their standard brothers. The dash of a standard Rolls was framed in steel, but these long cars were custom so the dash frame was cut by hand from wood. That extra hand work alone ensured these cars would be unique.

The door panels, window trim, and rear carpets were also special. Interior sets on these cars tended to be made up in a different area of the factory from the short wheelbase cars. The interior parts would be produced in batches, and the long wheelbase ones were always different.

Rolls-Royce Motors accepted the order for this car May 15, 1972. The car was given the chassis number LRA-14159, and was identified as the 133rd long wheelbase car to be ordered that year. Long wheelbase Shadows are fairly rare, with only 2,780 examples built between 1969 and 1976. For comparison, in that same time period Roll-Royce produced some 17,000 standard wheelbase sedans.

Rolls Royce was always a small volume carmaker. That year they would build 2,473 cars, of which 629 were bound for the United States. Perhaps 75 of them were long wheelbase sedans. That made these cars about as rare as convertibles, and they are actually rarer today as fewer sedans survive whereas almost all convertibles have been preserved.

Most Rolls Royce dealers sold cars from the catalog, as opposed to selling them off a lot like ordinary cars. This particular car was purchased by a Connecticut businessman in early September, shortly before it was completed. This Telex shows the status of several cars, and identifies 14159 as "no longer available for sale."

Back then cars were typically secured with a 5-10% down payment with the balance to be paid when the car arrived. Few Rolls-Royce dealers offered financing, so the deals were almost all cash. Leasing of luxury cars was still quite a long way into the future.

A few days later the car was invoiced out by the factory. You'll note the invoice was in British pounds, which at the time were each worth 2.45 US dollars. At the September 1972 exchange rate, Rolls-Royce America paid the parent company $17,762 for the car.

This next paper shows that the car was consigned to Claridge Holt, Ltd for shipping to America. They put it in a container and loaded the car on a Seatrain container ship bound for the Port of Newark. The car left for America in late October.

Those of you who are interested in ships will note this car probably rode to America aboard Seatrain Euroliner, a nearly new (launched 1971) high speed gas turbine container ship. Euroliner was one of the first large purpose-built container ships. She carried almost 900 full sized containers at full capacity, and was just under 800 feet in length. Her two turbines drove her at 26 knots - a brisk pace now or then. In fact, for many years, Euroliner held the cross-Atlantic speed record for a freighter at 31+ knots.

For purposes of comparison, the cruise speed of Euroliner was the same as the cruise speed of Queen Mary 2 today.

At the time, these ships were acclaimed as revolutionary but they always operated at a loss. Modern large container ships have roughly three times the capacity, and somewhat less horsepower and a lower cruise speed from a single diesel engine. Air freight has taken the place of fast ocean freight, and bulk capacity has replaced speed as a top design goal.

When it arrived there was some slight damage . . . oil spots on a fender and damage beside the trunk. That was fixed in New Jersey.

Shipping and preparation took a bit more than a month. On November 27, Rolls-Royce of America shipped the car to their dealer, Hoffman Motors of Hartford, Connecticut; invoicing them for $23,255. Looking close, you'll see that the payment terms are "sight draft." This was a common method of paying for vehicles in the pre-Internet era. A sight draft looked like a check, but it was only cashable once the maker had notified the bank that certain conditions had been met.

In this case, the draft would have been cashable once the car and certificate of origin were delivered intact to Hoffman. The sight draft number is shown on the invoice, and it was probably deposited a few days after the invoice was written. Today, carmakers simply charge the bank accounts of their dealers through the Federal Reserve clearing system but that provision didn't exist in 1972.

The car had a suggested list price of $28,715, but Rolls-Royce did not believe in windows stickers. This was the retail price sheet for the car, which was kept in the vehicle's file at the dealership and possibly given to the buyer:

Hoffman's Rolls-Royce operation is long gone, though they remain in business at the same location in East Hartford with a Porsche-Audi dealership.

In any case, no window sticker was needed as the car was (like most others of its kind) presold. This vehicle was destined for Matthew Saczawa of Wethersfield, Connecticut. He received the vehicle in early 1973, and registered the car at his winter home in Boca Raton, Florida.

Looking at the timetable you can see that 8 months passed between acceptance of the order and delivery of the car to its new owner. Where most car companies changed model years in September, Rolls-Royce often continued their model years till the following spring!

That was a result of the long time it took them to build the cars. They accepted orders for the current model year right into summer, which meant the last of the 72s were not delivered till the spring of '73, under the best of circumstances.

Mr. Saczawa - the car's first owner - owned the Atlantic Machine Tool Works in Newington, Connecticut. He was 52 years old when he bought this car. He kept the car for 25 years, only selling it in 1997 because he was too infirm to drive. During that time, the car covered 36,000 miles. That seems like a low number but these cars are often driven sparingly, especially when they are bought by older people who tend to keep them as pets.

The second owner kept the car on Cape Cod for 12 years, at which time it was purchased by the present owner. Here's the car as it appears today, still remarkably clean and original:

Reading through this paper trail, I am reminded that we are not just owners of these vehicles; we are caretakers - keepers for whomever will follow us. Ordinary cars are driven for 15 years and scrapped. Nicer cars - Mercedes, BMW, or Jaguar - have longer lives but they are still finite. Rolls-Royce cars, in contrast, are seldom ever scrapped. More than 70% of all Rolls-Royce motorcars ever built are still roadworthy today. That's a remarkable thing, but you can see why looking at this example.

The Silver Shadow series was the most maintenance intensive Rolls ever made. At the same time, it is one of the least valuable in the used car market because it is the most common. The result is that many of these fine cars are neglected and abused, and quite a few will be broken up for parts.

I hope the surviving examples get better care as they become rarer, because they are really quite nice to drive. One day, we'll look back and wonder where all the Shadows went. When that happens, I've no doubt this one will be a survivor.

John Elder Robison

John is the owner of J E Robison Service, Rolls-Royce and Bentley service specialists in Springfield, Massachusetts. John is a technical consultant for the Rolls-Royce Owner's Club on Silver Shadow and other modern cars. He's been around Rolls-Royce motorcars since the vehicle in this story was new.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Warmup is part of the ritual of driving any antique, and
wise owners follow it faithfully. Few
question the wisdom of bringing an old engine up to temperature before putting
it under load. Yet many of those same
people hop into modern cars and zoom out of the driveway without a moment’s
preparation. Is that wise?

Most carmakers say warmup is unnecessary, but they are under
pressure from government agencies to keep fuel economy up, and warmup burns
gas. And they are in the business of
selling parts . . . cars that don’t break don’t make them any money. So I don’t know if I’d follow their advice
blindly, in this area and some others . . .

When I think about the problems people have with high-end
cars, oil leaks and head gasket failures are high on the list for any
brand. When we disassemble engines for
oil leakage we often find gaskets cracked, which means they were not strong
enough to hold against the applied fluid pressure.

It’s easy to assume they didn’t hold because they just
weren’t good enough, but that’s not always the only explanation. In fact, when an engine is cold the metal
parts have contracted so the fit between two pieces of engine is fractionally
looser than five minutes after start, when everything is warm

As the engine parts heat and expand, the bolts tend to
expand less, so they become more tightly clamped. Why?
Because the engines in modern cars are aluminum or some other lightweight
alloy, and the bolts are almost always steel.
Steels expands less.

At the same time, when an engine is cold, the oil is
thick. Thicker oil = higher oil pressure
as the pump works harder to force it through the passages of the motor. An engine that has 15 pounds pressure at 800
rpm hot might have 50 pounds when cold, and pressure could soar to 100psi or
more if the motor is raced.

At the same time, stepping on the gas with a cold motor
means high combustion chamber pressures.
Mix that with those loose clamping forces on the cold head gasket and
you have a formula for head gasket blowout.

Manufacturers can say what they will . . . the logic and
engineering sense of the points above will stand. They may have engineered in enough strength
to protect against the failures I describe, but then again, maybe they
didn’t. After all, if they did, we’d
never see those failures in the shop!

The simple takeaway – five minutes of warm-up will keep your
motor alive longer, with fewer leaks and less risk of failure. And when you do drive . . . go light on the throttle until everything is up to temperature!

Friday, December 21, 2012

With all the talk of Christmas, and the holiday weekend, precious little is said about the machines we leave behind. What about the cars that languish in our service department, partially eviscerated, sick, or wounded? What about the ones that are cured, waiting for their owners to return? What about the others, the ones who slumber in storage, waiting for spring?

I thought we might take a moment to reflect on those machines in this time of commercial frenzy

Some say every car contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. That was certainly true in the case of this 2002 BMW, which went home yesterday, leaving these gnawed and eaten bits behind.

Then there's the Lexus, yearning for service, sitting hood agape.

In the next bay a Porsche hangs on the lift, bereft of engine and interior, as we search out and fix the devastation wrought by rampaging rodent invaders.

A Jaguar XKE hangs next to it, with the body stripped for paint repair and the engine removed for overhaul. It will be transformed for spring, but that's still some months away . . . .

In the Land Rover shop an engine sits dismantled as Paul assembles a chassis for one of out winter Defender restorations. This one will head for Nantucket, and a life on the beach.

A Rolls Royce convertible sits quietly, waiting for its seats to return from the upholstery shop. As the TV ads used to say, "A car without seats is like a day without sunshine," and I believe that is still true.

Over in the engine shop a Jaguar motor awaits repair. Meanwhile, it sits safe, among more of its kind, Jags and Rovers and a couple Rolls Royces.

A few cars sit outside excited, waiting for owners to drive them home:

This Rover's owner is headed here on the train, at this very moment. By the time you read this, they'll be headed for home.

This one's going west, to the Hudson River country of New York. The journey will be easier, with the new stereo we fitted.

There are many more the pictures don't show . . . The Willys waiting on its door latches, and the Three Black Bentleys. They come from different cities but they've become fast friends and can often be seen pushing lesser cars out of the way when the gas guy comes round.

There's the Lincoln, and the Cadillac, and the Triumph out front. There's the Harley, and the Jeep, and the ancient Ferrari. The six Rolls-Royce sedans and the Mercedes 600. The old 6.3 and the nice 3.5. All waiting.

While you are out celebrating, raise a glass to the cars left behind. Be considerate when you return, and remember machines may have feelings too.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

“All I’ve done is change the oil, and do whatever service my
local garage told me about." That’s what
the owner of a ten-year-old 150,000 mile Lexus told me yesterday. So what should I do now?

We looked at the receipts and she was right. A bunch of oil changes, a few sets of tires,
a few sets of brakes, and a battery had taken her all that distance. It hadn’t been very expensive, especially
compared to what the dealer wanted when they quoted the recommended services.

Now the car had an engine misfire. That had caused catalytic converter failure,
and a check engine light. The owner knew
the car wouldn’t pass inspection that way, and the corner garage didn’t do work
like that. So . . . the car ended up at
our shop.

What does a responsible shop owner do, when someone like
that comes in? It’s like when the CPA
has a new client walk in the door and say “I haven’t filed any tax returns
since 2003, and now I’ve got this letter.
What do you suggest?” What
indeed.

I have seen some very high mileage Lexus cars in my
day. We had one fellow put 420,000 miles
on a 1999 LS400 without a single major failure.
But he did his maintenance. This
car was a bit different. It was fifty
thousand miles past the timing belt change interval, and a hundred thousand past
the transmission service date . . . . this car was living on borrowed time.

As I explained to the owner, it costs less than $1,600 to
change a timing belt, water pump, and all the stuff in front of the
engine. If the belt breaks the bill is
going to be at least $5,000, maybe considerably more. It’s an all or nothing thing. Every day you drive without belt breakage,
you win. The day it breaks, you lose
big. No belt lasts forever.

She decided to change the belt.

We moved on to the other items on the service schedule. Spark plugs were next. Why?
Because the car had an intermittent skip. Ignition failure is the most common cause of
misfire faults. What happens is that the
plugs get old. As they age, it takes
more and more voltage to fire them. That
extra voltage puts stress on the wires, connectors and coils, and eventually
something fails. For that reason,
whenever you have an ignition miss, step one is spark plug replacement.

You may still need other parts but you certainly need new
plugs if the old ones have been in the car 150,000 miles.

She decided to change the plugs

Now we get to the “other” fluids – brake fluid, transmission
fluid, rear axle lube, coolant and power steering fluid. Some people say, “I went this long without
changing them, best leave it alone so I don’t stir things up and cause a
problem.” While many people use that
line as a rationalization for doing nothing, it ensures the eventual failure of
the system. Lubricants, like belts and
plugs, have a finite lifespan.

Brake fluid absorbs water, and it will rust your brake
system from the inside. Coolant becomes
acidic, and dissolves your radiator and engine from within. Transmission, steering, and axle lubes all
pick up tiny metal particles. Left in
the old oil, they will grind away at the bearings till something fails. At the same time, oil gradually loses its
film strength, which is what keeps the gears from galling against each other
under load.

She decided to change the fluids.

In the end, after going through the list line by line, we
agreed to do all the deferred service on the car. It cost a hefty sum, to be sure, but it’s
still less than she would have spent had she done it all on time, because some
of the things we are doing would have been done several times already.

Which begs the question . . . .

Was the original maintenance schedule too conservative? If so, she saved quite a bit of money with
little or no consequence. Or will she
pay a higher price down the road, as the un-maintained parts and systems fail
before their time?

I wish I knew. I’m
sure some carmakers are conservative and others are not. I’m also sure some drivers are hard on their
cars, while others are gentle.

In the past five years I have lost count of the engines I
have changed in Mercedes, BMW and other cars because the owners failed to
change their oil. I used to ask how they could be so dumb, but after the tenth or
twentieth car came in the door I knew the answer. Cars don’t talk back. So when money is tight, the car gets neglected. Most live, but some die.

When I point that fact out, the owners get mad at me. Fine, I tell them. I’m not the one making loan payments on two
tons of scrap iron because I failed to protect my investment. That’s the thing about being autistic. When people act dumb, and machinery suffers,
I may take the side of the car and not the human. Vets feel the same about people who abuse
cats and dogs.

The lesson to take away from all this: You can probably push the maintenance
schedules a bit if you drive gently. But
when you do, you take a big risk.
Deferring a $1,000 service won’t be so smart, if it costs you a $7,500
engine. Carmakers make maintenance schedules for a
reason.

Most of the time, when we suggest altering a factory schedule, it is to do something more often, not less. The carmaker, after all, wants a schedule that keeps the car alive long enough to give them happy owners and a good reputation, but not so long that the car never wears out. We, as repair people, expect to care for things and have them last almost forever.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Yesterday I posted some pictures of newly painted parts that
are part of a Land Rover restoration we’re doing. I captioned them “better than new,” and one
of my readers asked if that was really the right goal of restoration. Shouldn’t
we follow the vision of the designers, he asked?

When we tackle a rusty old Land Rover Defender or Series
truck, we are working with something that was originally a roughly finished
utility vehicle made to a low standard of finish for use by military forces,
farmers, and rural residents.

Today those vehicles are valuable, and often owned by very
affluent people who are demographically very far removed from Land Rover’s
original target market. Land Rovers were
built to be working off-road vehicles that would wear out in time, and be
scrapped. Today’s collectors have a very
different expectation. They don’t
usually “work” their Rovers though they may attend club events. Rather than expecting them to wear out and be
scrapped, many collectors expect a level of quality they can cherish for a
lifetime.

Where the original buyers bought for function and value,
collectors buy for sentiment and sometimes-potential financial gain. Most of the people who are drawn to Land
Rovers discovered them years ago, perhaps on a farm, or at a camp in the
wilderness. Others – like me - saw Land
Rovers in Wild Kingdom or National Geographic and dreamed.

When I grew up one of the things I became was an automobile
service manager. I watched people use
Land Rovers to work power line projects and go where no other car could, and we
fixed them when they sustained damage. I
saw the compromises Land Rover chose to make the vehicles affordable, and I saw how they subsequently fell apart in the field. I learned how engineering oversights and errors
could leave a person stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere. I saw how New England winters turned bare metal
undercarriages to cheesecake, and I wondered what might be done about that.

When I began overseeing restoration work I saw how cars are
put together, and I began to understand the tradeoffs designers and engineers
had to make to deliver a combination of cost, performance and durability. One of the first things I learned was that
cost is one of the most important design goals of every car engineer. If a dollar could be saved by leaving a hidden
metal part unpainted, Land Rover was very likely to do it.

Other carmakers – like Rolls-Royce – had bigger budgets and
made fewer of those compromises. They
had their own issues, to be sure, but initial finish was not usually among
them.

People would say thing like, “I want my Rover to look just
as it did when new,” and at first I took them literally. However, when we saw the results it became
clear my clients did not really want the rough fit and finish of the original,
even though it was true to their words and the way Rover had done it. When they said, “like when it was new,” they
were actually envisioning an idealized “new” where it was hand built, hand
fitted, and near perfect. That is quite
far from what the factory did.

The more of these jobs I did the more I realized that our
clients put a lot more emphasis on finish quality than any factory ever had. That meant all parts needed to be painted or
finished even if they never had been before.

As we acquired more experience our philosophy
of restoration diverged farther and farther from the manufacturer’s philosophy of car
building. Every step down that road
made our clients happier. We acquired
the ability to restore cars so that they looked great and drove better than
they did when new.

We built a reputation as a shop that built vehicles to
perform, as well as look great. Too many
restorers see their job as cosmetics-only, and we could never agree with that
point of view. If I had a choice I’d
take a fine running car that had some cosmetic imperfections over a beautiful
trailer queen any day.

When we do cosmetic work, we always consider how it will
perform in addition to how it will look. If we weld up a custom bumper,
we ask if it will hold the weight of the car on a floor jack. When we paint something we ask if the finish
will hold up when our clients use the vehicle. Often that leads us to use more rugged techniques like powder coating.

When someone comes to us and says, "I want to drive my Land
Rover on the beach," we think long and hard about how we can minimize corrosion
in that hostile environment. Every part
we successfully protect today is a part that won’t have to be chiseled off, ten
years down the road.

Here's one of our projects, from beneath. It's not the perspective most people see, but it looks good and more important it will be durable.

Then there’s the matter of customization. As much as some people like originality, I
like tasteful custom work because it’s an opportunity to express our creative
skills. We love building custom bumpers,
hidden winch mounts, or special racks and carriers. Those things are like custom cabinets in a
fine home – you can look at them forever and know they were made just for you,
and not bought from a parts catalog.

Obviously the word customization can mean many things, all
the way to the Batmobile or the George Barris custom rods of the sixties. If
you have something far out in mind, make sure the restorers share your
vision. Otherwise you run the risk of
being like that sailor who passed out in the tattoo parlor . . .

We’ve also learned how much time quality work takes. We know a full restoration can easily consume
a thousand of hours of labor. Some
complex cars can take far more. Jobs
like these can take a year, maybe more to complete. But the results will be worth the wait.

If you’re thinking of restoring a car – Land Rover or
otherwise, I urge you to talk to the shop.
Learn their philosophy and make sure it’s in line with what you want. Remember attitudes can vary with car
lines. I’d approach a 1954 Rolls Royce with
a very different mindset than the one I’d apply to a 1978 Land Rover
pickup. Some people want to work on one
line only but I’m happy to take a variety.
There’s room in the restoration world for all of us.

One final piece of advice – pay attention to how the shop
manager communicates with you. Ask whomever you will be dealing with to explain some aspect of their trade and listen close. Do you get the sense they really understand the theory behind what’s proposed to do?
If you have doubts – watch out!
Some of the biggest mistakes I see come from well intentioned
ignorance. Another thing to watch for is
specialized knowledge. If you care about
originality the shop should know what is and isn’t correct for your year and
model.

Ask how they will update you on progress. We send updates with images and text every
week. People may roll their eyes at
endless images of wheel bearings and pistons but they sure know what we are
doing, every step of the way. We may
send a client a thousand images in the course of a job. We want our clients to be fully informed so
there are no surprises when they see their finished car.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

I receive a surprising number of messages from motorists who
are unhappy with dealer service departments.
Who can repair my BMW right? Where do I find a competent shop to work on
Mercedes? Who repairs Land Rovers? One of the biggest sources of distress comes
from intermittent problems with certified used cars that are out of new car
warranty, but still covered by certified warranty. This recent missive typifies what I hear:

For the past few
months I've had both the check engine light and tire pressure monitoring system
warning lights come on and off. I check
the gas cap and the engine runs fine. My
tires pressures seem ok, too. I've taken
my Mercedes to a dealer three times for these warning lights, and every time
they've returned the vehicle saying it's fixed. After driving the car again for
a few hours, or a day, the lights come back on. The dealer said that as long as
the check engine light is not flashing, it's not a critical problem. I'm just tired of dealing with this dealer's
service department.

Why does this happen?
Is the dealer incompetent, or the problem so intractable? In most cases, the answer is neither. Much of the time, the answer can be boiled
down to four words:

To explain what this means in the context of car repair I
need to start by explaining some things about warranty and service. When a car is new, it is backed by a
warranty from the manufacturer. With
rare exceptions, there is no limit to that warranty, and the dealer is not
responsible except as the service agent.
The manufacturer cannot say, “we’ve done all the warranty repair we are
going to do,” and abandon you.

If a new car has a really intractable problem the
manufacturer will usually offer a replacement vehicle or in some cases a refund
or lease cancellation. Carmakers go to
great lengths to satisfy customers.

They also expect a lot of their dealers. One thing they expect is that the dealer will
do something in response to customer complaints. If a car comes in with an intermittent fault
the dealer will often change the most likely parts even if the fault is not
present at that moment, because that gives the best chance of cure, and the
manufacturer stands behind them and pays the bill. If a subsequent repair is needed, they
generally stand behind that too.

If a lot of time is needed to diagnose a difficult problem
the manufacturers have a policy of paying the technician as needed. Knowing that, they usually get the job
done. Problems can still happen but the
vast majority of new cars get fixed successfully.

Cars covered by certified programs are a whole different
story. Once the new car warranty expires
the manufacturers unlimited obligation comes to an end. The certified program is often administered
by a third party company who didn’t make the car and has strict limits on their
responsibility for it.

In most cases, there is no longer provision for paying to
diagnose difficult problems. Indeed, many
used car warranties – technically called service contracts because they are not
actual manufacturer warranties – don’t pay for diagnosis at all. Those that do often pay a fraction of the
real time taken.

Yet customers don’t know the difference. They just expect
their problems to be solved. But that
can’t happen when no one is willing to spend money to find a problem. It’s not the dealer’s car – so he’s not
writing a blank check if the trouble can’t be found in 15 minutes. The car’s owner thinks warranty covers
everything and the dealer must be trying to cheat him if they ask for any
money. The result – the dealer says “no
problem was found” and boots the car out the door. One day, they figure, it
will come back with a visible failure and they can fix it then.

The focus of carmakers is to make money by keeping customers
happy so they buy more cars. Good
service on new cars is part of that. The
dynamic for a third party administrator is totally different. They make money from finance, by collecting
fees for service contracts and paying out as little as possible.

Once those folks manage the car’s service, everything
changes.

Yet the motoring public knows nothing of this. Everyone tries to hide this ugly truth. Many dealers are told they cannot charge
customers extra for so-called certified repairs. That is presumably meant to prevent gouging,
but in practice it ensures no dealer technician will waste a single unpaid
minute chasing a difficult intermittent problem.

The system works for most people, most of the time, because
most problems are not intermittent and motorists learn to ignore the rest.

For the rest of you . . . .

We’re here in Springfield, Massachusetts, and we’ll diagnose
and fix anything at our regular shop rate.
If an extended warranty pays us, great.
If not, the owner can pay. From
the shop perspective that’s the only fair way to do this. We get our clients everything we can from
their service contracts and they pay the balance. We charge for actual time worked, and WE WILL
solve the problem.

We are open from 8-5, Monday through Friday. There is a key drop in the front garage door for people who leave cars after hours.

We are New England's leading four-star authorized Bosch Car Service facility. Owner John Robison is a technical consultant to the Rolls Royce and Bentley owner clubs, the Land Rover club, and the BMW and Mercedes clubs. We're tech inspectors for the Porsche Club of America for regional track events. John's writing appears in many automotive magazines.